'He said that he will play under Jaisimha' - Saif Ali Khan recalls when Tiger Pataudi refused to captain South Zone

The Nawab of Pataudi– Mansur Ali Khan– is known one of the greatest Indian skippers ever. After being assigned the captaincy at a young age of 21, he led the Indian side in 40 of 46 Tests he played in, achieving triumph in nine of them.  Pataudi amassed 2793 runs at an average of 34, which was an impressive feat considering the sight in his right eye was impaired forever due to a car accident.

Bollywood actor and son of Mansur Ali Khan– Saif Ali Khan– opened up about his father’s cricketing voyage. Saif narrated various fascinating stories from his father’s cricketing days.

The actor even mentioned the incident when ‘Tiger Pataudi’ didn’t want to play for Delhi due to differences with the management. Hence, he called ML Jaisimha to tell him that he wanted to come to South Zone.

Following Pataudi’s move to South Zone, everyone was expecting that he would take over the reins. However, he declined the captaincy of South Zone out of respect towards Jaisimha.

Jaisimha was captaining South Zone and Tiger was captaining India: Saif Ali Khan

“He (Tiger) had trouble with the Delhi administration, and they weren’t getting along. So he told Tiger, ‘I don’t think you’ll play for North Zone’. So Tiger called Jaisimha and told him he wanted to come to South Zone and that he didn’t want to play in Delhi anymore,” said Saif Ali Khan in an interview with Indranil Basu on Sportskeeda Cricket.

“So Jaisimha’s father ‘hired’ Tiger. Jaisimha was captaining South Zone and Tiger was captaining India. Everyone assumed that the captain of India would captain South Zone, but Tiger said, ‘No, I want to learn about South Zone and I will play under Jai’. This, I thought, was very cool,” added Saif.

Furthermore, Saif also opened up on the influence on him while growing up. He revealed that his grandfather– Nawab Iftikhar Ali Khan Pataudi– had collected a lot of books, which had a huge impact on him.

“My grandfather used to have a lot of books lying around, people like Len Hutton. Some of these books and photographs are still here, and my grandfather was quite a collector, unlike my father.”

“Indian Summer by John Arlott, the writing is incredible, like when Norman Mailer writes about George Foreman and Muhammad Ali,” added Saif.